CCN activity, variability and influence on droplet formation during the HygrA-Cd Campaign in Athens

Measurements of cloud condensation nuclei (CCN) concentrations (cm-3) at five levels of supersaturation between 0.2-1%, together with remote sensing profiling and aerosol size distributions, were performed at an urban background site of Athens during the Hygroscopic Aerosols to Cloud Droplets (HygrA-CD) campaign. The site is affected by local emissions and long-range transport, as portrayed by the aerosol size, hygroscopicity and mixing state. Application of a state-of-the-art droplet parameterization is used to link the observed size distribution measurements, bulk composition, and modeled boundary layer dynamics with potential supersaturation, droplet number, and sensitivity of these parameters for clouds forming above the site. The sensitivity is then used to understand the source of potential droplet number variability. We find that the importance of aerosol particle concentration levels associated with the background increases as vertical velocities increase. The updraft velocity variability was found to contribute 58-90% (68.6% on average) to the variance of the cloud droplet number, followed by the variance in aerosol number (6-32%, average 23.2%). Therefore, although local sources may strongly modulate CCN concentrations, their impact on droplet number is limited by the atmospheric dynamics expressed by the updraft velocity regime. © 2017 by the authors.